Drink (86 page)

Aspiring Grecian politicians were warned off drunkenness: Pittacus, writing to Periander of Priene, cautioned him to steer clear of drink “so that it may not be discovered what sort of a person you really are, and that you are not what you pretend to be.”

The only defense against the baneful influence of the dog star was to drink: Alcaeus, the Mitylenaean poet, says:

Steep your heart in rosy wine, for see, the dog star is in view;

Lest by heat and thirst oppressed you should the season’s fury rue.

Some of the venues could flood their arenas.

Its modern English equivalent is Dennis.

According to a sixteenth-century English translation of the rule, a
hemina
equated to one pint.

Geber’s habit of writing in symbolic code, incomprehensible to the casual reader, is the source of our word
gibberish
.

A popular English translation (1540, Lord Berners) of the adventures of Sir Huoun gave Shakespeare the inspiration for his
Midsummer Night’s Dream.

About the same as that of the Egyptian laborers who build the pyramids at Giza.

One-half gallon.

The time it takes to say an Our Father.

The first Englishman to observe this procedure thought it so much humbug: “Before the master of the house begins to drink, he will proffer the cup to every one of his guests, making show to have them to begin though it be far from his intention.”

Hence our word
nepotism
.

The figure in 2004 was one per every 529. 14 Boorde was quite a character—an Oxford scholar, a former monk, a spy who traveled all over Europe, the man who introduced rhubarb to England, whose written work included a guidebook for travelers to the continent and a treatise on beards. Interestingly, as well as condemning beer as downright dangerous to his fellow countrymen, he also advised them to steer clear of Adam’s ale, for “water is not wholesome sole by itself for an Englishman.”

Now divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Morton was a hard man to keep down. He returned to America, was deported again, spent time in Exeter jail, and composed the
New English Canaan
(1637), a vituperative account of the New World colonists.

All colonial era cider was “hard,” i.e., alcoholic, as the pilgrims lacked the technology to prevent it from fermenting.

The post of poet laureate was formalized, with an annual stipend of a butt of sack.

The same as a pint of small beer.

The same prohibition was reenacted in 1672—presumably to remind New Englanders of its existence.

Andros was later satirized as a megalomaniac lunatic in
Androboros
(“Maneater”), the first play written on American soil. The play also targeted his predecessor, Anthony Colve, who was characterized as Oinoboros (“Wineeater”).

A generic term for wheat, barley, rye, and oats.

Gin had acquired a variety of nicknames and brands—Old Tom, Strip-Me-Naked, et cetera—most of which alluded to its potency.

It was treasonous to drink the health of either the old or young pretender, and so Jacobites would toast each other holding their cups above a pitcher of water.

It was carbon dioxide.

French planters were allowed to export neither rum nor molasses, lest they compete with the brandy makers of the parent country.

The inscription refers to a circular letter sent by the Massachusetts Council to the other colonies, objecting to the Townshend Acts, which the governor demanded they rescind. “No. 45” refers to the issue number of
The North Briton
in which John Wilkes, the son of a distiller, published an article on abuses of power that led to his trial for treason and made him a hero of sorts in the Americas.

Italy competed with Carolina in the supply of rice to the slave trade.

I.e., everyone except the Rum Regiment.

Vaucluse was reputed to have been infested with snakes before Sir Henry took possession and drove them away: He imported five hundred barrels of Irish bog, which was dug into trenches around the perimeter of his property, and which kept all serpents, in obedience to St. Patrick’s valediction, off the land they enclosed.

Eighteenth-century catsup was made from mushrooms, not tomatoes.

“Rank taste when ripe, resembling the smell of a fox”—Robert Beverly, 1795,
History and Present State of Virginia
.

Barley.

A nightshirt cut very short that scarcely covered the buttocks.

Then poet laureate.

Albeit an image of the hero of “The Drunkard’s Death” did not number among the decorations.

And according to his tax returns, briefly the wealthiest man in the United States.

About one in ten of all adult males.

Who did not abbreviate their name to its initials—SOT.

A neologism coined in 1843.

The last two named after a band of brothers in the Bible who were the only people in its pages to take a vow of abstinence.

An expenditure of around $50 per head at current bar prices. For the sake of comparison, the Republican Party spent an average of $12.65 per vote for its victory in 2004.

Cantharides vesicatoria.

By then known as the Barbary Coast.

Sex shows.

Now buried under Union Station in central L.A.

By the elevation of Mouton Rothschild to the category of first growths in 1973.

Lavoisier is rumored to have carried out his last experiment at his own execution. Its purpose was to determine how long a severed head remains conscious. An assistant stood by the basket at the foot of the guillotine and counted how many times Lavoisier’s head blinked its eyes before they closed forever. Apparently he managed fifteen.

The great restaurants of Paris kept serving throughout the German siege, albeit with improvised menus. Voisin offered roast cat garlanded with rats, accompanied by Bollinger Champagne.

Urquell, the original Pilsner brewery, is still in production and is still celebrated for the excellence of its beer.

The Bavarian Reinheitsgebot of 1516.

And refused by the soldiers of the Temperance Regiment raised by the governor of Maine, who had pledged to serve dry.

His monomania alarmed Dickens, who thought Cruikshank had gone too far in the name of a good cause. In 1853 he issued a gentle rebuke, which accused him of introducing “a Whole Hog of unwieldy dimensions into the fairy flower garden.” Dickens accompanied his rebuke with a mock-temperance version of
Cinderella,
whose politically correct heroine was as dull as she was dry.

They could still buy beer at any age.

Prince Albert, spouse of Queen Victoria, was one of the last to be treated with this therapy, and was prescribed six pints of brandy per day in the hope of defeating the waterborne ailment that ultimately killed him.

In the sense of British expatriates.

As was his American hero—Edgar Allan Poe.

The taste then was for ultrarealist pictures of romantic or historical subjects— Salomé in Spanish costume, Napoléon on a stallion. Few bourgeois could imagine hanging the portrait of a common and elderly drunkard in their drawing rooms.

Nineteenth-century French slang for a flirtatious and attractive woman.